Contact
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens Kober
University of Stuttgart
Institute for Artificial Intelligence
Learning and Interactive Robots (LaIR)
Universitätsstraße 32
70569 Stuttgart, Germany
🖂 jens.kober (at) ki.uni-stuttgart.de
🕿 +49 711 685 88102
Office: 315a
Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionstechnik und Automatisierung IPA
Nobelstraße 12
70569 Stuttgart, Germany
🖂 jens.kober (at) ipa.fraunhofer.de
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jens-kober/
Research interests
Robotics, Motor Skill Learning, Machine Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Imitation Learning, Deep Learning, Interactive Learning
News
- 1 accepted journal paper:
. Navigating Uncertainty: Safety Solutions for Autonomous Vehicle Integration Into Mixed-Mode Mobility. Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 39:102141, 2026. [bibtex] [url] [doi]
- 1 accepted conference paper:
. Emotion in an Active Inference Model of Human Driving. In 7th International Workshop on Active Inference (IWAI), 2026. Accepted.
- 1 accepted journal paper:
. Active Inference as a Model of Collision Avoidance Behavior in Human Drivers. Nature Communications, 17(1):5009, 2026. [bibtex] [pdf] [doi] [code]
Also see Waymo Blogpost and TU Delft Blogpost.
As well as media coverage by TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge (requires subscription), and Algemeen Dagblad (in Dutch, requires subscription) - “Coaching for Robots: Jens Kober brings people and machines together” press release by University of Stuttgart and Fraunhofer IPA
- 3 accepted conference papers:
. Set-Supervised Diffusion Policy: Learning Action-Chunking Diffusion through Corrections. In Robotics: Science and Systems (R:SS), 2026. Accepted. [bibtex] [pdf] [webpage] [code] [video]
. Evaluating Randomized Smoothing as a Defense Against Adversarial Attacks in Trajectory Prediction. In IEEE 29th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), 2026. Accepted. [bibtex] [pdf] [code]
. Increasing the blade tip-to-tower clearance using individual pitch control. In Torque, 2026. Accepted.
- 2 new preprints:
. Resolving Space-Sharing Conflicts in Road User Interactions Through Uncertainty Reduction: An Active Inference-Based Computational Model. arXiv:2604.19838 [cs.AI], 2026. [bibtex] [pdf] [doi]
. Search Inspired Exploration in Reinforcement Learning. arXiv:2602.00460 [cs.LG], 2026. [bibtex] [pdf] [doi]
- Jens Kober started a new position as full professor at University of Stuttgart with a joint appointment at Fraunhofer IPA.
- 1 accepted journal paper:
. Accurate and Affordable Cobot Calibration Without External Measurement Devices. Communications Engineering, 2026. in press. [bibtex] [pdf] [doi] [code] [video]
- 1 new preprint:
. TacLight: A Six-Axis Soft Optical Tactile Sensor for Physical and Virtual Interaction. PREPRINT (Version 1) available at Research Square, 2026. [bibtex] [pdf] [doi]
- 2 accepted conference papers:
. LLM-Guided Task- and Affordance-Level Exploration in Reinforcement Learning. In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026. Accepted. [bibtex] [pdf] [webpage] [code] [video]
. Studying the Effect of Explicit Interaction Representations on Learning Scene-Level Distributions of Human Trajectories. In IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium (IV), 2026. Accepted. [bibtex] [pdf] [code] [data]